Iraq parliament passes bill legalizing child marriage and marital rape

Baghdad: Iraqi parliament passed a bill, that secular activists say, that legalizes child marriage and marital rape.

The bill, the Jaafari Personal Status Law, lists rules with regards to inheritance, marriage, and divorce. Lobbies in favour of the draft, which is named after a Shiite Muslim school of jurisprudence, say that the draft only regulates practices that already exist in day-to-day life. However, the question one needs to ask is that in doing do they make child marriages and marital rape legal? Read on.

Opponents say the bill has in store a major setback for women's rights in Iraq. Women rights activists opine that the bill reverses all the progress that has been achieved in the field of women’s rights. Apprehensions are on that such a bill can also herald violence among various communities in Iraq ahead of parliamentary polls in April.

Critics point in particular to a clause of Article 147 in the bill which allows for girls to divorce at the age of nine which means that, in effect, they can be married off even earlier. There is another article in the bill that requires a wife to have sex with her husband whenever he demands.

There are other clauses in the bill that activists see as downright ‘ridiculous. It lays down conditions under which under which mothers must breastfeed their children and makes parameters on how many nights a polygamous man must spend with each wife.

But the part of the bill that has angered opponents the most is the one about the marriage and divorce of young girls in Iraq, where a quarter of women are married before the age of 18, according to a 2013 study by the Washington-based Population Reference Bureau.

Analysts say that it is unlikely that the bill will make it through Iraq's Council of Representatives. According to a senior government official who declined to be named, one of the main reasons it was endorsed by cabinet was because Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, a Shiite, did not want to be criticized for failing to back a demand from within the majority community ahead of the polls.

Speculations are on that Maliki could also be looking to leave the option of a post-election alliance between his State of Law coalition and Fadhila open as no single party is expected to win a majority in parliament on its own. “There is a political dimension to this draft,” said Ihsan al-Shammari, a professor of politics at Baghdad University. He said, “Everyone is looking to win votes and wants to appeal to their base. Submitting this bill, right now, is for political and electoral reasons.”

New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) and even the UN envoy to Iraq echo the domestic opponents’ stern condemnation of the bill.

Justice Minister Hassan al-Shammari, member of Fadhila, an Iraq political party, offers a different explanation. He said, “The law contains other articles which guarantee maintaining women's dignity and rights.”